


Such a Way to End

by okayokayigive



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 09:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayokayigive/pseuds/okayokayigive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years of routines, ten years of real life on earth, ten years of "normal" for the metacrisis and Rose. He's adjusted...but has she?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Such a Way to End

**Author's Note:**

> From the song shuffle challenge on Tumblr. The character prompt (from neverwhyonlywho) was TenToo/Rose; the song that shuffle chose was "He Just Can't" by the Proclaimers. (And there's really no way to write a *happy* fic for that song.)
> 
> Disclaimers:  
> I don't own Doctor Who. Clearly. I also don't own the Proclaimers' lyrics, which are bolded for your reading pleasure.

There was a time that he thought he’d get to be with her forever.

Well, not forever. He knew they wouldn’t get forever. But a human version of forever, at least.

There’d been kisses, and touching, and sex (sex! with Rose Tyler!), and a wedding, a new flat and new experiences and new routines and all sorts of new things in the ten years since he’d been given the gift of a life with Rose Tyler. Ten years of routines that, well, sure, they were routine - comes with the name, yes? - but they were easy routines. Easy for him to get comfortable in. Easy to cope with curtains and windows and carpet and mortgage when there was tea with Rose Tyler every morning and sex with Rose Tyler on Tuesdays and dinner with Jackie and Pete and Tony on Sundays and getting to say “Rose Tyler” every single day. “Rose Tyler I love you.” “Rose Tyler I did the dishes.” “Rose Tyler I forgot to take out the trash but then I did because it smelled bad and I didn’t want you to have to smell that with your pretty little nose.” “Rose Tyler, come to bed.”

Isn’t there someone that famously said that the things we are most afraid of are the things we see in ourselves? He’d know, if he still had a full Time Lord brain. Would be able to pull the answer out of thin air. Well, full Time Lord him would never be pondering that question, because full Time Lord him would never be left with handfuls of nothing *but* thin air where his heart used to be. He’d fill it with bananas and adventures and jam. Ooh, jam. Rose always kept jam in the cupboard for him.

Rose.

In the beginning, it was him she was worried about. Losing the TARDIS, losing the adventures, the ability to run off and do his thing.

In the end, it was her that needed the adrenaline rush. He would have been happy with the routine.

–

_One Year Ago_

**Last night, picture of flouted desire  
Is broken, defeated, he’s lost all his fire**

He’d just wanted to surprise her. Shake up their routine a little, maybe some office hanky-panky on a night when she was working late. He just wanted to…

It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter what he wanted, because it’s not what he got. 

What he got was Rose Tyler. Skirt around her waist. Writhing on the edge of the desk.

With someone who was decidedly not him.

–

**Last night, champion of violent emotion  
Has canceled a decade of tender devotion**

The pain of regeneration was nothing compared to this.

There was hurt, and anger, and sadness, and yelling. Lots of yelling. Emotions spilling all over her office like (don’t think bodily fluids DON’T THINK HUMAN SEXUAL BODILY FLUIDS) Vytraxian vomits of welcome. But these weren’t welcome. Not at all.

Because in the wake of the emotions came the admissions. That this wasn’t the first. Not by a long shot. 

That she fed off the adrenaline that came from sneaking around.

That she hated - HATED - all that comfortable routine.

That she wanted to get caught, was waiting to get caught, because she wanted out. Away from everything they’d built. Away from their routines, from “Rose Tyler, I did the dishes” and Saturdays on the couch and sex on Tuesdays.

Away from him.

–

He runs his hand across the dresser now, through the dust that’s gathered where her clutter once stood. It’s been a year of pleas, a year of “I love you”s, a year of begging.

In the relative dark of his silent room, he prays a silent apology to the man whose dream he was supposed to be living. And he thinks that maybe now it’s time to start moving on.

**He knows she won’t take him back**  
No matter how much he begs her  
He knows she can’t take him back  
No matter how much he tells her he loves her 

**Such a way to end**  
Such a tragedy  
Such a waste, waste 


End file.
